


Stakeout With Bodie

by hutchynstarsk



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Boredom, Gen, Humour, Writing, descriptive, stakeout in the car
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hutchynstarsk/pseuds/hutchynstarsk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>With beta help by <a href="http://anna060957.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://anna060957.livejournal.com/"><b>anna060957</b></a>.  All mistakes my own.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Stakeout With Bodie

**Author's Note:**

> With beta help by [](http://anna060957.livejournal.com/profile)[**anna060957**](http://anna060957.livejournal.com/). All mistakes my own.

**_Assignment for writing class:  
Write a highly descriptive scene from memory or real life, making use of as many senses as possible. Include dialogue._ **

**_Use the five senses:  
Taste, Smell, Touch, Sight, Hearing_ **

**_Possible sixth sense:  
Passage of time?_  
\--**

****

 

**Stakeout With Bodie**

**by Ray Doyle**

 

Bodie is driving today. Or rather, he would be if we were going anywhere. Instead, we’re on a stakeout. Bodie sits behind the wheel, drumming it with the fleshy part of his palms. The car smells of sweat and fading deodourant, leather and the grease from old fish and chips.

Now Bodie is humming. The metal of the car’s bonnet makes a ticking sound in the heat. My window is rolled down but there is no breeze. We can’t remove our jackets because our guns and holsters will show. Bodie’s wearing black leather, I’m wearing brown. Sweat slides down my side in a slippery, ticklish rivulet. I can still taste chips underneath the tangy peppermint I chewed to cover it up.

Across the street, the house we’re watching is still and silent as a school after hours. The people in the house work night shift, are probably asleep. But our boss has assigned us to watch and so we watch. We don’t know when they’ll get the contact and be on the move. We’ve been taking turns paying close attention. When Bodie’s on full alert, I take a few moments to work on my assignment.

Now Bodie is humming. I resist the urge to take a swipe at the back of his smooth head with my knuckles. Instead, I distract him. “Are you still dating what’s-her-name?”

This will usually start him on a long and involved story.

Not today.

“Janet. Yeah.” He beats on the steering wheel, as if he fancies himself a drummer in Genesis.

The glare of the sun makes my head hurt. My jacket is open, and though I can’t shrug it off, I undo another button on my shirt to let my chest breath a bit. It offers precious little in the way of cooling. The cloth still sticks to me, feels itchy even though this shirt was clean a few hours ago.

My mouth feels dry, so I reach for the Thermos with water in it, thinking of men on deserts, rationed water, and camels. Opening it, I smell a particularly revolting mixture of alcohol and meaty liquid: bouillon and vodka, my partner’s speciality.

He watches me with an avid grin, one dark eyebrow quirked slightly higher than the other one in his smooth, pale face. He’s sweating as hard as I am, but you’d never know it from that gleeful expression. The sun glistens on his damp forehead, and his short, dark hair is damp and flattened. But Bodie is used to the heat, even when it’s as unseasonably freakish as it is today.

“All right, Bodie. Where’s the other one?”

“I don’t know what you mean, mate.”

“Give over.” I glare at him, snap my fingers. He smirks and shrugs, a smooth rise and fall of shoulders. Then he hands over the other flask.

It squeaks when I unscrew it. The threads are getting rusty, the faintest tinge of brownish-red marring them. The water sloshes, sounding cool and refreshing inside, a tiny echo of a well. It tastes warm and of metal, more unsatisfying than weak, tepid tea, and barely touches my thirst.

Bodie drinks some bouillon and vodka. “Mm. It’s delicious, this.” He shoots me a hopeful look, to see if I’ll rise to the bait.

To keep from clouting him, I search for another topic, growing a bit desperate.

We’ve already discussed the weather, our pay rises (or lack thereof), and whether Liverpool will win the Cup.

“Are you still taking that writing class?” asks Bodie.

“Yes.”

“Is it going well, then? Meeting lots of nice girls?”

“Oh, all sorts of people.”

“Is that what you’ve been working on, when you think I’m not looking?” He nods to my hands.

I see no point in hiding it, if he’s already seen, so I pull out my notebook and flip it open to the current page. “Yes.”

“Should be using moleskin, mate. Like the famous authors do. Something leather-bound and sophisticated.” He reaches over and flicks the cheap, lined paper with one flat-nailed finger. My Biro rolls down to land beside my thigh on the seat, and I make a grab for it as it tries to burrow lower.

“You can use the expensive things when you take the class,” I counter, retrieving my blue-ink Biro. I shake it out and stare down at the page, barely begun, only notes describing the scene so far. “I have a class tonight, so if you don’t mind watching for a bit, I’ll just scrawl away and improve my mind, shall I?”

“Oh, sure, mate, yeah. Be my guest. I’d _hate_ for you give in your homework late.” He gestures grandly, a twitch of a grin and the eyebrows working together to look as expressive as laughter. He’s _enjoying_ this.

He stares out the windscreen and watches the house most dutifully whilst I scribble, but I can feel his eyes on me periodically.

Sweat slides down my back, prickles my thighs, beads on my upper lip. The paper feels damp and even the pen doesn’t glide smoothly across it. (When I tried to use a pencil, it barely left a mark.)

After a time, when I’ve assembled sentences from notes, and paragraphs from sentences, and tried to capture exactly the smell in the car, he speaks again. “How much more do you have to write? I can see you’re not enjoying it.”

“I need fifteen-hundred words.” I glance back over the pages I’ve composed. “At least five hundred more, I’d say.”

“If you don’t enjoy it, you should quit.”

“I enjoy it. But description’s hard to write.”

“Oh, well then, fill up the space with me.”

I look up and glare at him, clutching my pen so tight it almost hurts. I try not to think how a pen could be used as a weapon, how they are used as weapons in jail, and a particularly gruesome memory of an investigation I was called in to assist on once, that I wish I had not just thought of.

“Describe me, yeah?” The eyebrow arches—it’s getting a lot of play today—and he shifts, puffing up his chest. “That’ll give those writing birds something to swoon over.”

“Won’t it just?” I look back at my paper, glaring at the empty spaces. A fly buzzes inside the car. Bodie’s hands clap together, and there is silence.

When I look up, he’s wearing a sort of satisfied look and wiping his hands carefully with a handkerchief.

The odd thing about Bodie (well, _one_ of the odd things) is that despite how good he is with his fists or his guns, he seems to always manage to keep his hands relatively smooth. I’ve teased him about it once or twice, trying to get him to reveal just which brand of scented hand cream, for instance, he uses to keep soft and lily-white. However, that always brings him to asking where I get my perms (which I don’t).

He’s watching me, waiting for an answer.

“I’ve spent most of the essay writing about you,” I admit. “There’s nothing left to say.”

He clicks his tongue, giving a tilt to his head. “Oh, mate, there’s always more to say about me!” His smirk is knowing.

“I could describe punching you in the head, and the blooming tendrils of pain that it sends up my knuckles and arm. I could describe the spurt of blood from your nose, the flare of your angry nostrils as you try to retaliate—and can’t hit me because you’re too slow.” I wrap my fingers round and round the pen, turning it restlessly. It’s hot from my hand now.

I glance at the house, and it’s quite still and silent. I wonder if Bodie would like to flip a coin to see who should go and buy more fish and chips. I’m not hungry, but any excuse to get out of the car. The chippie is in easy walking distance. In fact, I can smell it from here, that same stale oil. They really should change it more often than I change the oil in my bike.

“The birds won’t get their money’s worth if you don’t describe me,” warns Bodie.

“They’re not paying to hear it. I give this in to the teacher. We’re not far enough along yet for reading our work out loud.”

“Oh, well she’ll miss out, then.”

I bend over my book and draw little fish in the margins, fish with X’s for eyes, to show they’re dead, fish with limp fins and haphazardly drawn scales.

“Draw some chips, too,” says Bodie.

I jerk away from my book and glare at him, and he pulls back, smiling that easy grin.

My gaze narrows. “I think you really enjoy stakeouts, as long as you think I’m not.”

He shrugs modestly. “So go on, then. Read me what you’ve written and I’ll tell you what it needs.”

So I do. My throat is dry before I’ve finished, and I have to take another drink of that horrible water, but Bodie smiles (or smirks) in all the right places. He nods at the end of it, a decisive nod that shows just a bit of an extra chin: my partner is not at his slimmest at present.

“That’s easy,” he says. “Just write down everything else we’ve said since you wrote that, and you’ll have enough easily. Don’t forget to mention that I’m handsome and engagingly modest.”

“You can do that well enough for the both of us.”

I wrote down the rest of what we said and then put the notebook away, because a dark blue, battered van had pulled up at the house.

 

_I’m sorry for the doodles and blood stains on this. I didn’t have time to type it up or re-write it. Bodie says to tell you it was just a scratch, he hasn’t even got any time off for it. He says you mustn’t worry. –R. Doyle_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Discovered in an LJ challenge.
> 
> My style prompt: descriptive. My story prompt from [](http://byslantedlight.livejournal.com/profile)[**byslantedlight**](http://byslantedlight.livejournal.com/) : one of the lads writing something.


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